Aspasia; A Romance of Art and Love in Ancient Hellas Volume 2 - Robert Hamerling

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ... the pleasures of the golden days of youth. Young Callias, who called his father a niggard, had also grown up, and Pyrilampes' son Demos, famous for his beauty, was also of the opinion that his father did not know how to make a proper use of his wealth. These three were inseparable. Xanthippus and Paralus were sometimes drawn in to help play some wild prank by Alcibiades, who grudged them the renown of virtue, but were forced to be content with a minor part. In the first place Telesippe's children lacked intellect and cleverness, and secondly their purses were not so full as those of the sons of the two richest men in Athens, or even Alcibiades', who on attaining his majority had come into full possession of his father's property. Alcibiades felt a peculiar affection for the young foreigner, whom Pericles had brought from the Samian war and reared in his own house, with his two sons and ward. But all the latter's efforts to draw the dreamy, taciturn, somewhat clumsy youth into his gay circle, failed. This same youth began to be the object of attention, not unmixed with awe, on account of a strange disease that attacked him. He developed the mysterious tendency known by the name of somnambulism. In the dead of night, when every one was asleep, he rose from his couch, walked with closed eyes through the moonlit peristyle, then ascended to the flat roof of the house, wandered about there for a time, and finally returned to his bed as unconsciously as he had left it. The news of the sleep-walker in Pericles' house spread through Athens, and from that moment he began to be regarded with a certain touch of fear, as a person under the influence of evil powers. If the boy Alcibiades had attracted general attention from the Athenians, he was...